


The Greater Good

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: ACD Canon References, Angst, Book 3: The Dark Water, Canon - Book, Drama, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Friendship, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Lots of it, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reichenbach Falls, Story: The Final Problem, Suicidal Thoughts, Unconventional Spelling Of Elspeth's Name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1484713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I'm not sure if I had ever believed in it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Greater Good

We would fight, on and on into the next century. We would fight against the whole of the accursed world and our deaths wouldn’t make an ounce of difference.

That was what he had meant, I understood now. He had always known that this day would come – the day when we would be forced to give everything to this hopeless cause. Whatever we had loved and held dear was gone; dead and shattered.

I stared at the raging sea below. _He screamed_ , Neill had said.

And I had burnt him for that. I had burnt him and I had revelled in his burning as if the mad pulsation of that precious fire could somehow make up for the coldness of the Doctor’s stilled heart. As if it could revive Elsbeth, or Charlotte Jefford, or Baynes, or the Grace couple.

As if it had meant that there would be no more murders.

This last thought in particular had incited in me a certain sense of wonder for I was now closer to the shoreline and I could see the Doctor clearly, his fragile body thrown against the sand, his hair glistening with raindrops. How satisfied he had sounded in his letter to me! “To remove Dr. Cream forever from our land and our time”, indeed!

“Why would you have been so glad of that, Doctor?” I asked, sinking to the sand beside him. There was a splash of blood across his face and I turned away because I couldn’t bear looking at it. “You did not believe in the greater good and yet you happily gave your life for it.”

It serves to show the state I was in that the lack of answer from him came like a horrible realization, a solution to a monstrous mystery I had been unknowingly pondering.

“Bell,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “Bell!..”

 _There will be more Creams_ , I wanted to say. _It is a disease we all have fallen ill with; it is our doom and our future._

But there was no one to hear me in the depths of that roaring darkness.

 

I have made Moriarty the only one of his kind. Because somewhere, in some world this enormous sacrifice has to be what it deserves to be. There, the “extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe” has “crowned” Holmes’ career; and Watson, the ever loyal Watson, is free to tell the public of this incident as an unquestionable if tragic triumph.


	2. The Golden Sea

In the one nightmare I sometimes see about that night, he’s standing on the very cliff from which I’d plunged, at an impossible, breathtaking height, ever so close to the edge of the abyss.

“Please, Doyle,” I say, “for mercy’s sake - don’t.”

He does not hear me; or else, doesn’t listen. I can’t make out his face - he’s but a dark solitary figure in the midst of the raging storm. Somehow I know that this solitude is a great and unrightable wrong; and there’s something accusatory about his silence. What have you done to deserve to be listened to? He seems to be asking. What have you to show for yourself but a series of fatal failures?

I can hear the gravel rustle under his feet and fall down the face of the cliff when the wind disturbs his balance.

“Doyle,” I attempt again.

Feeble spots of warm light blossom upon him like hideous flowers.

It is punishment for what I have done.

A great and furious sea is roaring one endless fall below him, a sea of pure, scorching golden fire. Flames leap into the blackness of the night behind his back; his hair is dishevelled by the gentle streams of hot air.

He turns.

I’m sure I must be saying something - repeating his name, imploring him to reconsider, to please, _please_ think again - anything that could help to silence the powerful, malicious rumble of the hungry fire.

His face is stained with tears, and he’s deathly pale.

“Bell,” he says at last, helplessly, and makes a single step down.


	3. Cruelty Has a Human Heart

_Lying on that dark beach is like lying at the bottom of an abyss. Far, far above me are the swirling thunderclouds; the edge of the cliff; the sea waves hissing with foam._

_The skies weep. I feel water stream down my face and drip onto the sand._

Someone is shouting my name.

_It has long been our shared agreement that we would carry on with this quest no matter what. This was the idea we held onto through every sleepless night, through every nightmare, through every heartbreak._

_But now, staring into the green sorrowful depths overhead, I realize that there is, after all, a price I am unwilling to pay._

Someone is weeping for me, a shadow looming in the torrential rain. Someone has come to mourn my death.

_What I wouldn’t give to destroy it all; to take back every promise I made, to forget every scheme I concocted; to quash the vanity and the loneliness that had made me take him in all those years ago.  
_

I have only failed once, _I told him. What arrogance! He should’ve ridiculed me for this statement and left for good. Why did he stay?_

“Doctor!”

He’s all but begging me for explanations - pleading with me to talk, to tell him something; and I explain all in perfectly needless detail. He’s draped his coat around my shoulders and is buttoning it up at the throat with a meticulousness that is equally needless.

In that moment I know that he, too, found the potential price of our victory entirely too high.

_The night is baring its fangs of white foam, and the smell of seawater is the smell of blood._

I don’t quite know how, but we end up clinging onto each other in a most pathetic fashion. I stroke his shaking shoulders. None of it is as it should’ve been, and we’re losing time. But for the life of me I can’t let go.

_Our ultimate goal is our ultimate downfall; what should’ve been a moment of triumph feels darkly absurd._

You have failed, _I hear his strained, high-pitched voice._ Your method is a pitiful lie!

“’Some anguish’!” he chokes. “’Some anguish’, Bell! How could you ever write that?”


	4. An Act of Heroism

_I had this darkness look at me from the eyes of the living and from the empty sockets of the dead; I had it embrace me, kiss me, say my name. In my dreams I looked at my own hands and saw that they were black as charred wood, invaded by some vile disease._

_But now what keeps me up at night is the fact that the menace is gone. It is the lack of footsteps, the lack of whispers, the absence of the enemy lurking in the shadows behind me. I wake up in cold sweat to the deafening sound of silence._

_No one is waiting for me from the dark._

We were crossing the Victoria Swing Bridge, a skeleton-like construction of darkened wrought iron. Far below us the Water of Leith splashed tranquilly.

The emptiness and the quiet of the place made us all the more aware of the echoing footsteps ahead of us. Someone was walking on the bridge in heavy shod boots, his gloved hands slapping regularly against the railings. There was a kind of hurried confidence about these sounds, almost inappropriate in these early hours when the city was still asleep, covered in freezing brilliant dew.

I put my own hand on the railing. The bridge had two rail tracks as well as footpaths; however, it was heavy yet delicate. And I felt its smooth coldness reverberate with the stranger’s movements. _Boom, boom_ , _boom_.

The man who was walking towards us was lean and dressed in all black. I could not quite make out his face, concealed by the dusk as well as by the shadow of his top hat. A pang of anxiety, so familiar and so outlandish, seized my chest; and, though I tried to tell myself to calm down, already something in his posture - in his walk - was stinging, nay, frightening me.

I all but jumped out of his way when he strolled past, never sparing me a look. Where was he going? Who knows; home, perhaps, to a warm fireplace and a family dinner? I doubt he ever had the remotest suspicion of the effect his appearance made on me.

“Doyle?” I heard the Doctor’s voice. He had retreated to the opposite side of the footpath to let the stranger pass, and now he turned to me in surprise and concern.

I smiled at him most unconvincingly. The iron beams against which he leant suddenly seemed to me bone-thin; the dark mass of water visible behind his back was far too great.

“Doctor,” said I, “come away from the edge.”

Bell silently crossed the footpath and took me by the hand. We walked the few dozen feet back to the shore, with just a little more haste than was entirely dignified.

“There, now,” said he, seating me on a bench. For a moment his voice assumed a calm depth to it, a true doctor’s voice; it was as if I were physically sick and he was certain to find the cure. Something in me responded to this tone, and I allowed him to rub my hands and to give me a sip of brandy.

He called me by my Christian name.

I made myself concentrate on his face; he took off his top hat and put it on the bench next to me. The cold winter sea wind was fluttering his hair. The expression in his eyes I found nearly unbearable to look at.

“It was an act of heroism,” I said loudly. “An act of heroism and selflessness.”

“It was an act of cruelty,” said he.

There was a pause, and I felt a feeble smile stretch my lips. When had it happened that I turned from his sternest critic into his defender against his own wrath?

I held his hand in both of mine.

“It was for the greater good.”

After a few unsuccessful attempts he managed to smile back at me. The growing cold daylight was colouring the river a delicate melancholy blue.


End file.
